Danilo Restivo

Crime Files

Danilo Restivo is a sadistic fetishist – and double murderer - who stayed one step ahead of the law for almost 20 years.

Danilo Restivo was born in April 1972 in Sicily, Italy. At the age of ten his family moved to the city of Potenza, where his father was a director of the national library. Local people spoke of Restivo as odd and prone to strange behaviour.
Restivo’s actions would give cause for serious concerns; in 1986 he was found to have tied two children to a tree. The police did not get involved – the parents resolved the matter between themselves. It would be another 25 years before Restivo would be successfully challenged by the law.
His sadistic streak developed and in 1992 he was convicted of harassing five young girls who were his neighbours – a trait which would run through his crimes.
When, in 1992, 23-year-old Angela Campochiaro has a 10cm lock of hair cut from her head in a cinema in Italy, another of Restivo’s traits had manifested itself: his hair fetish. Around this time a number of women in Italy complained of being targeted in this way.
The one group of people who did know Restivo had a serious problem was the military. He was medically examined at the point of joining up for his national service. Army doctors said he had strange attitudes towards sexual behaviour and he was turned down.
It would seem that there was little challenge made to Restivo over his increasingly worrying behaviour. This would leave him free to unleash his own brand of depravity and horror on at least two unsuspecting victims.